This new literary series, curated by Frank J Miles, captures the times we are in and moving towards – continuing the tradition of a Downtown Manhattan art space where so many parts of the worlds of art and culture and New York City converge. It brings writers, authors, readers, storytellers, audiences from many worlds of New York City and beyond to showcase what is next for the city – welcoming a diverse spectrum of literary voices. Communitas brings people together to open more worlds, make beauty, make magic, create peace, create freedom, be more futurist than nostalgic – and really use words and their power to build a community.

• Duncan Roy made his feature directorial debut at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival with AKA, an autobiographical account of his experience infiltrating London’s high society in the 1970s. AKA played at numerous international film festivals, garnering many awards and a BAFTA nomination for the Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Roy followed AKA with Method in 2004, starring Jeremy Sisto and Elizabeth Hurley, and The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2006, a modern-day interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s classic horror novel. Duncan also has written for The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and The Daily Beast. His blog, which follows his personal experience living in L.A., receives an enormous amount of hits daily, and in 2010 was praised by Roger Ebert as “a moving and evocative chronicle of modern gay life.” He is currently finishing his first novel, The Book of Resentments,” which will be published Spring 2014.

• Darnell L. Moore has written for The Huffington Post, Ebony.com, TheRoot.com, Gawker, Harvard Journal of African American Policy, and President Barack Obama. He is also a managing editor of The Feminist Wire. He was appointed by Mayor Cory A. Booker as inaugural chair of the city of Newark, N.J. LGBT Concerns Advisory Commission, the first of its kind in the state of New Jersey. He is the co-chair of the groundbreaking Queer Newark Oral History project – an archival project that seeks to chronicle the multifaceted lives of LGBTQ Newarkers and their allies and was the co-chair, along with Margaret Wood, of the Newark Youth Policy Board’s sub-committee on LGBTQ youth concerns. Under their leadership, the Policy Board produced the first-ever white paper specifically focused on the needs of LGBTQ youth in the city of Newark. Darnell, currently a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on African American Studies at Columbia University, is presently working on a book that examines contemporary racial and sexual politics and jointly operates a social entrepreneurial company named YOU Belong with former NFL player, Wade Davis II, focused on creating proactive and progressive solutions to the problem of social injustice.

• Pedro Angel Serrano was born in 1959 in Newark, N.J. Childhood memories include the riots of 1967, cockroaches big enough to ride to school, and cherry blossoms in the spring. He hosts a radio show on WRSU, 88.7-FM, New Brunswick, N.J., and he has been writing a book with the working title: Pride: Diary of a Gay Skinhead.